Italy’s data watchdog has questions for DeepSeek

Rome: Italy’s Data Protection Agency (GPDP), which briefly blocked ChatGPT in 2023, has raised questions about the use of personal data by the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot of Chinese start-up DeepSeek.

“The authority, considering the potential high risk for the data of millions of people in Italy, has asked… what personal data is collected, from which sources, for which purposes,” the GPDP said in a statement on Jan 28.

It has also asked “what is the legal basis of the processing (of the data), and whether it is stored on servers located in China”.

The authority has also asked what kind of information was used to train DeepSeek’s AI system and, if the data was scraped from the internet, to clarify how users of the service are informed about the processing of their data.

The GPDP has addressed its concerns to Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence, and given them 20 days to respond.

Based out of the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou – sometimes known as “China’s Silicon Valley” – DeepSeek sparked panic on Wall Street this week with its powerful new chatbot developed at a fraction of the cost of its competitors.

The Italian watchdog in December fined OpenAI €15 million (S$21 million) over the use of personal data by its popular ChatGPT chatbot, but the US tech firm said it would appeal against this.

The investigation began in March 2023 when the GPDP temporarily blocked ChatGPT in Italy over privacy concerns, becoming the first Western country to take such action.